Tabletop & Titansgrave

Hello everyone! Darryl here with a slightly delayed News Digest that I’m blaming on a tropical storm. We’ve got new details on Tomb of Annihilation and D&D Beyond, news on the Critical Role sourcebook's release, Origins Awards winners, a huge charity stream from Saving Throw, the new Warhammer 40K edition, and more!

Hello everyone! Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! And this week is all about controversy. Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition release information (with a controversial hiring), Green Ronin is looking for female writers for Lost Citadel, International Tabletop Day may not be able to meet demand for promotional items, and more! Even this week’s Kickstarters are loaded with controversy!

Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week's gaming news! Paizo's Twitch stream including a lot of Starfinder news, Wizards of the Coast announced their next D&D book, Acquisitions Inc delivers a holiday special for sale, Green Ronin announces their plans for 2017, Mongoose Publishing does the same for their Traveller line, and more!

Hello, Darryl here with this week's news. Legendary Pictures (owners of Geek & Sundry and Nerdist) announced a new online video subscription service with big impact on popular tabletop gaming shows Critical Role and Tabletop, Paizo makes a bunch of big announcements including compact sourcebooks, a new in-store incentive program for Pathfinder Society, and a new campaign setting book, a classic Dragonlance comic is getting the graphic novel treatment, Warhammer 40K has new introductory model kits, and more!

Two of the biggest hits coming from the new surge of online tabletop gaming programming unquestionably are Wil Wheaton's Tabletop and the D&D live stream Critical Role, both from Geek & Sundry. Today, Legendary Pictures announced yesterday their new video-on-demand service Alpha which includes big changes to these shows. The service will cost $4.99 a month and give early access to many Nerdist and Geek & Sundry shows including Co-Optitude, The Dan Cave, and Because Science two days before they're released on other outlets such as YouTube. But the two biggest names have bigger changes coming.

Two online video series announcements came over the weekend. Not only did Wil Wheaton announce that the upcoming season of Tabletop will feature more roleplaying games, including Fate Core from Evil Hat Productions, but WotC announced that their popular live Acquisitions Inc., event hosted by Chris Perkins at PAX East every year will be getting its own video series this summer.

For those new to the concept of tabletop role-playing game, learning Dungeons & Dragons can be a daunting task. From the scope of imaginary fantasy it covers to the math required to the full engagement necessary for players to enjoy it, D&D is not a casual game for casual players. And yet the popularity of D&D is on the rise. There are lots of factors that have contributed to its ascension: an aging populace of gamers embracing their childhood hobby and a new streamlined edition, to name a few. But there may be a new factor contributing to the game's popularity thanks to the Internet.

Wil Wheaton has announced a couple of the games being played on his popular Tabletop web show this year, along with other news about the upcoming season (which will be the 4th season of the show). He and his team have reduced a list of about 450 games down to around 20, which are mainly boardgames but will include a couple of roleplaying games. The focus is a little more on family games this year (things in the vein of Tsuro and Ticket to Ride). While there's no official release date yet, the beginning of June is looking likely.

Green Ronin has revealed its plans for the coming year - a year packed with news of Fantasy AGE, Wil Wheaton's Titansgrave, Mutants & Masterminds, and more! In fact, with over 20 products planned, Green Ronin has a pretty hectic release schedule. You can read the full report here, but for those looking for the highlights, I've listed them below. The schedule includes RPGs, card games, dice, even a coffee-table book about fantasy cinema. Plus there are new or revised GM's Kits for several of their lines with new GM screens, reference cards, and combat trackers.

One of the interesting things over the last few weeks has been watching the Hot Games Chart change over the Gen Con period. As you may know, that chart monitors over 1,000 sites, blogs, and forums and compares how often different games are mentioned. The big change recently has been the meteoric rise of Green Ronin's Adventure Game Engine (which powers Dragon AGE, Fantasy AGE, Titansgrave, etc.) In the last three months it has climbed from #20 or so all the way up to #4 on the [non D&D] chart, and to #9 on the combined chart.

EN World Reviews

Dry erase boards. Flip mats. Graph paper. Lego. Theater of the Mind. All of these are valid, tried-and-true methods of tracking movement/combat in Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs. While I've employed all of these in the past, nothing has worked better for my games than the dungeon tile.

Here at EN World, I'mlookingatall-agestabletoprole-playinggames, board games, andcard games. Do they engage the players at the kids' gaming table? Would they cut it at the adults' table? Are they genuinely fun for every age? Amazing Tales is "a game for children who love adventures". Martin Lloyd's RPG is designed for a GM and one or two young players, and includes the rules, GM tips for young gamers, four settings with adventure hooks, and more.

The campaign that our group will be starting next week (and that I wrote a little bit about here last week) got me to thinking about martial arts role-playing games in general. I am probably by no means an aficionado of martial arts movies, or media, but I have enjoyed some Chinese martial arts films over the years (my first college roommate was/is a martial artist and fan of the movies). Plus, I am more of a fan of contemporary settings, and unfortunately the number of games that combine these two things are few. However, today I am going to talk about the Tianxia: Blood, Silk and Jade role-playing game from Jack Norris and Vigilance Press.

In Mythras, player characters are tied to family, village, and cults and their quests change the world around them and influence the direction of society’s growth. Mythras is mythic in scope and the PCs create legends with their adventures. This review covers a newcomer’s overall impression of Mythras.

Welcome to the Cypher System Creator Roundup! Unlocked during Monte Cook Games’Worlds of the Cypher SystemKickstarter campaign, the Cypher System Creator program is an option to distribute and/or sell official Cypher System crowd-sourced content. Setup within DriveThruRPG and RPGNow, the model is similar to the Storyteller’s Vault (World of Darkness), and the Explorer’s Society (7th Sea) in that individual creators can share their Cypher System content as long as it conforms to the content guidelines for the program, which can be found here.